In all likelihood it were two search widgets in the sidebar that made the search form appear twice.

I've asked developer to look into it and he fixed it using admin panel so it was a configuration issue. Unfortunatelly I have no details on how that was done.

Could you please assist?

p.nocomments {
  display:none;
}

This page is setup the same way: http://habituateoc.com/petropoulos/

To make other pages work the same as those, open the page for editing, uncheck the 'Allow comments' checkbox, check the 'Allow trackbacks' checkbox, and save changes.

If you look here at the new page I created the sidebar is still there. http://habituateoc.com/whp/

If you look here at the about page which I made a while ago the sidebar is not there. http://habituateoc.com/about/

I remember someone in the forums helping me by giving me some CSS code to copy and paste but I do not remember what the code is and where to paste it.

.posted {
display: none;
}

You can go to appearance > custom design > CSS and paste this into the CSS edit window and then click the preview button to see the change. With some browsers you may have to force refresh the browser to see the change.

I know a date is usually needed by blogs but in my case it is irrelevant.

If you are talking about a site hosted here at wordpress.com, then we need a link to it.

At wordpress.com, and in blogs in general, posts are organized by date, so there is typically always a date shown. In some themes, the date can be hidden by CSS if you have the Custom Design Upgrade, but this is not the case with all themes. It just depends on how the theme designer organized the markup (XHTML) and the CSS.

Or can it?

I created an "annotated bibliography" page (located in the upper right corner), but I think it looks cleaner in the sidebar as a category. Any suggestions? I am a relative novice with this stuff, so forgive me if the answer is obvious. Thanks!

b) Yes you can add "a button on the homepage that takes you to a blog" if you set your blog front to display a static page instead of your posts. See here:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/front-page/

c) Define "appropriate". If your main concern is a wide main column, you can consult this post of mine:
http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/maximum-image-width/

2.Life's realities just slapped me in the face, again!

3.Do-able

4.&5. Do-able and the only code I added through the visual editor was suggested by @thesacredpath.

6.Will do.

7.The information in the "NEW" box is the title of the lastest post. But, as you can see, I'm not using Steira as a blog, per se. Maybe I'm totally off base, but I was wondering if, even with the site as it is now, can I add a separate blog feature?
Like putting a button on the homepage that takes you to a blog.

P.S. Could you suggest some appropriate themes, preferably free, but I like to choose from a good selection.

• Re 2, the way this theme is structured, changing the width of the content column is very complicated (as thesacredpath already said).

• Re 3, if you mean the text in your posts, add this (replacing 000000 with the hex for the color you prefer):

body { color: #000000; }

If you mean the headings, add this (again replacing 000000 with the hex for the color you prefer):

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { color: #000000; }

If you mean other items, please specify.

• Nos 4 and 5 are related. The grey lines are the default frames around captioned images. Those frames should all be as in the first image of your post, but the sourcecode of your post is messed up. Captioned images are tricky when you use the visual editor: after you insert a captioned image, you must make sure you add a line break or a paragraph break. The easiest thing to do is insert plain, non-captioned images, add the captions in the main body of the post, and center them.

By the way, your sourcecode includes other junk too. Have you been copy-pasting from another source?

• Re 6, the theme doesn't natively support a header image, but there might be a workaround. Where would you like the logo to show up? Have you prepared an image in the desired dimensions? If so, upload it via Media > Add New and give us its URL.

• I don't understand 7. The "NEW" section is the title of the latest post. What exactly do you wish to change?

PS Agree with tsp: why don't you choose a different theme?

The white area behind the content is the result of not one, but two background declarations, one in "body" and one in "wrapper."

This will straighten up the spacing on the header and tagline. All I've done is to adjust these two elements so that the title is centered vertically. Find these in your custom CSS and adjust the "top" values to what I show below.

#subhead blockquote {
position: relative;
top: -80px;
}

#content {
position: relative;
top: -80px;
}

Quite truthfully, this is virtually the last theme I would start with if I were going to need to make changes to it. Everything takes two or three adjustments of other things.

1. Can't add backgrounds, at least not easily.
2. Can't change dimensions of the content area
3. I'm stuck with all that gray text, I'd like to choose text color.
4. The borders around the photos are unruly, some expand, some don't. The result is the homepage looks tacky.
5. Those gray horizontal lines that go across content section are useless. I should be able to put these rules where I
want instead of being confined.
6. I could'nt use a custom logo if I wanted to. How would I put it in?
7. The "New" box is useless. I thought it carried the title of the most recent post, but it doesn't.

I could probably go on, but you catch my drift.
Any suggestion?

I don't know if you could help me, but I'm sure you can remove the line from my heading.